I'd have to rummage through the reports and emails from attendees of the show that are in my email inbox, but I believe (don't quote me though) there were some technical problems during this time period of the show, causing the sound to be off. Plus the acoustics of the venue, and whatever or however the audio source was recording are playing a factor. If I catch any information to explain what your hearing I'll post it here.

NY Times review, reposting here because they are douches and it will be in the members-only archive soon.

"By BEN RATLIFFPublished: December 12, 2007

LONDON — Some rock bands accelerate their tempos when they perform their old songs decades after the fact. Playing fast is a kind of armor: a refutation of the plain reality of aging — all that unregainable enthusiasm and lost muscle mass — and a hard block against a band’s lessened cultural importance.

But Led Zeppelin slowed its pace down a little. At the O2 arena here on Monday night, in its first full concert since 1980 — without John Bonham, who died that year, but with his son, Jason, as a natural substitute — the band found much of its former power in tempos that were more graceful than those on the old live recordings. The speed of the songs ran closer to that on the group’s studio records, or slower yet. “Good Times Bad Times,” “Misty Mountain Hop” and “Whole Lotta Love” were confident, easy cruises; “Dazed and Confused” was a glorious doom-crawl.

It all goes back to the blues, where oozing gracefully is a virtue, and from which Led Zeppelin initially got half its ideas. The band’s singer, Robert Plant, doesn’t want you to forget that: He introduced “Trampled Under Foot” by explaining its connection to Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues,” and mentioned Blind Willie Johnson as the inspiration for “Nobody’s Fault but Mine.” (Beyond that, the band spent 10 luxuriant minutes each in two other blues songs from its back catalog: “Since I Been Loving You” and “In My Time of Dying.”)

Ahmet Ertegun, to whom the concert was dedicated, would have been satisfied, sure as he was of the centrality of Southern black music to American culture. Mr. Ertegun, who died last year, signed Led Zeppelin to Atlantic Records; the show was a one-off benefit for the Ahmet Ertegun Education Fund, which will offer music students scholarships to universities in the United States, England and Turkey, his homeland.

By the end of Zeppelin’s more-than-two-hour show, it was already hard to remember that anyone else had been on the bill. But the band was preceded by Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings — a good-timey rhythm-and-blues show with revolving singers including Paolo Nutini and Albert Lee, as well as a few songs each by Paul Rodgers (of Free and Bad Company) and Foreigner — who all had recorded for Atlantic under Mr. Ertegun.

There was a kind of loud serenity about Led Zeppelin’s set. It was well rehearsed, for one thing: Planning and practice have been under way since May. The band members wore mostly black clothes instead of their old candy-colored wardrobes. Unlike Mick Jagger, Mr. Plant — the youngest of the original members, at 59 — doesn’t walk and gesture like an excited woman anymore. Some of the top of his voice has gone, but except for one attempted and failed high note in “Stairway to Heaven” (“There walks a la-dy we all know ...”), he found other melodic routes to suit him. He was authoritative; he was dignified.

As for Jimmy Page, his guitar solos weren’t as frenetic and articulated as they used to be, but that only drove home the point that they were always secondary to the riffs, which on Monday were enormous, nasty, glorious. (He did produce a violin bow for his solo on “Dazed and Confused” during that song’s great, spooky middle section.)

John Paul Jones’s bass lines got a little lost in the hall’s acoustics — like all such places, the 22,000-seat O2 arena is rough on low frequencies — but he was thoroughly in the pocket with Jason Bonham; when he sat down to play keyboards on “Kashmir” and “No Quarter” and a few others, he simultaneously operated bass pedals with his feet, keeping to that same far-behind-the-beat groove.

And what of Jason Bonham, the big question mark of what has been — there’s no way to prove this scientifically, but let’s just round it off — the most anticipated rock reunion in an era full of them? He is an expert on his father’s beats, an encyclopedia of all their variations on all the existing recordings. And apart from some small places where he added a few strokes, he stuck to the sound and feel of the original. The smacks of the snare drum didn’t have exactly the same timbre, that barbarous, reverberant sound. But as the show got into its second hour, and a few of the sound problems were gradually corrected, you found yourself not worrying about it anymore. It was all working.

Led Zeppelin has semi-reunited a few times in the past, with not much success: short, problematic sets at Live Aid in 1985 and at Atlantic Records’ 40th anniversary concert in 1988. But this was a reunion that the band had invested in, despite the fact that there are no plans yet for a future tour; among its 16 songs was one it had never played live before: “For Your Life,” from the album “Presence.”

The excitement in the hall felt extreme, and genuine; the crowd roars between encores were ravenous. At the end of it all, as the three original members took a bow, Mr. Bonham knelt before them and genuflected."

It was the most anticipated event in recent rock history. In September, the surviving members of Led Zeppelin announced that they would reunite for a one-time-only tribute concert for Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records, in the group's first headline show since it disbanded in the wake of drummer John Bonham's death in 1980. Over the intervening three months, the level of expectation and suspense had reached proportions as colossal as any of Zeppelin's bombastic rock anthems. And at 9pm on Monday evening at London's O2 arena, Jason Bonham struck the first beat of "Good Times, Bad Times," launching his father's former bandmates, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Robert Plant, on an electrifying two-hour-and-10-minute tour through the peaks of the band's 12-year career.

Dressed in black — perhaps to lay to rest the ghosts of clumsy reunions past (members briefly regrouped for 1985's Live Aid concert and the 1988 Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary) — Zeppelin seemed to pull together and pull it off. Early technical issues (including a muddy struggle through the quiet bits of "Ramble On" were resolved and forgotten by the next song, "Black Dog," as the band warmed to their task and timing. The international crowd of all ages — OK, predominantly balding baby boomers — were in their element. Gleeful fifty-something execs with no more outward display of rock n' roll than an open collar mixed with kids in vintage Led Zeppelin T-shirts and studded belts; parents rocked out with their kids. If the crowd's attitude was akin to worship it's no surprise: the event was a pilgrimage, with fans flying in from over 50 countries around the world (although American accents predominated in the former Millennium Dome's bars and restaurants before the show).

To call the concert eagerly anticipated would be an understatement. One million people registered for a lottery to buy the 18,000 $255 tickets — which subsequently became some of the most expensive ever sold on the secondary market, going for around $2,000 each. A 25-year-old man from Scotland — not even born when Zeppelin split — spent $170,000 for a pair in a charity auction. Ticket-holders started lining up outside the arena on Friday, sleeping outdoors in the December chill just to get a choice spot in front of the stage when the gates opened. Even ticketless fans felt compelled to do something — anything — Zep-related to mark the reunion. One Oxfordshire hotel ran a luxury Led Zeppelin weekend, offering guests "TV's to defenestrate" and a menu of red snapper (in tribute to the band's legendary seafood-and-groupie incident). Theaters around the U.K. — including one under O2's canvas roof — screened old Zeppelin concert footage, as did network television.

But in the South London arena, it was just like days of old, albeit with a few changes. Where once lighters flickered in appreciation, there was now a sea of tiny screens as the crowd held their camera-phones high. Robert Plant kept his shirt buttoned, while his pants were fitted rather than spray-on tight. His once-blond mane was graying and his craggy features lent him the appearance of a Tolkeinesque wizard; Jimmy Page's hair was flowing white instead of dark and unruly. And while thankfully his embroidered silk bell-bottomed suit didn't make an appearance, his violin bow did, for the solo on "Dazed and Confused," as the crowd, a bit old for headbanging, nodded furiously in time. And when Page pulled out his double-necked guitar, the camera-phones came out again, for it meant only one thing: "Stairway to Heaven." At that moment it was all right to indulge in the threadbare rock radio staple; live, the experience was spine-tingling. The band closed the set with a powerful version of "Kashmir"; minutes later a deafening roar greeted the encores "Whole Lotta Love" and "Rock And Roll." There were no acoustic ballads, no half-hour guitar solos, and Jason Bonham wasn't asked to emulate his father's drum-solo slogs — "Moby Dick" had to make way for the hits, obviously. But the show was a triumph, and will surely fuel calls for a full tour next year (a rumor the band won't confirm).

It's sometimes easy to forget how huge Led Zeppelin in their prime really were: the group has sold over 300 million albums to date, and their last two U.K. concerts before Bonham's death, at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire in 1979, drew an estimated 400,000 people. By that point, punk was rebelling against the excesses that Zeppelin embodied and that Spinal Tap were soon to lampoon. But passion for Zeppelin's fierce rhythm and blues and accomplished musicianship endures. After all, it's been a long time since we rock and rolled. And Monday night was a triumphant reminder of that."

I could provide a ton of links to various quality material. I'd have to go through what's been shown above so far. The complete show is up on a couple of torrent sites, but since my pc is shot from a flood a couple of years ago, I'm going to wait for a trade or a tree of the show. It's out there.

i am surprised how excited everyone is about a possible zep reunion. i guess when plant/page did the whole no quarter thing you knew they were going to kinda mess up the songs, so interest was comparatively low.

i guess nostalgia is in style... i never would have guess everyone would go so crazy for the police either.

I was thinking the same thing, but I have neither patience nor self-control. Plus we don't even have an estimated release date for the DVD yet ... it could be a while.

I think which ever company releases the DVD will try to cash in on the hype and press as soon as possible. I could see May being the earliest release date, though the most likely is July or August. On a non-reunion related note, I received my Song Remains The Same: Collector's Edition DVD yesterday. Pretty decent deal for $30, though the included t-shirt is wrapping paper thin.

It would have to be before May. The hype will have completely died off by then--assuming that they don't go on tour which I don't really think they will at this point.

How long does a concert DVD usually take? I have no frame of reference here. Logistically I'm sure they could have it out long before May if they wanted to. The question is when it would make the biggest splash and the most money.